She Makes $222,000 Per Month On Amazon & Shopify At 26 Years Old

hey everyone this is Stefan James from Project life mastery and I'm being joined right now by my beautiful fiancee Tatiana who most of you already know we've done other videos together here on project life mastery today we wanted to do a video to share with you guys more about Tatiana's journey and story - now making 222 thousand dollars a month with her ecommerce brand Lux curves that's combined with Amazon and Shopify and last month to give you guys an idea she did over three hundred and ninety-two thousand dollars in sales so I thought it'd be great to have Tatiana share with you guys more about her story how she first got started with this business all the way up to where she is today some of the struggles some of the challenges some of the adversity that I think a lot of you guys can relate to if you're brand new and wanting to build your online business but more specifically starting on Amazon and with Shopify now Tatiana and I have done a few other videos together one of which that went viral a few years back sharing how she's making 40,000 dollars a month on Amazon I'm gonna link to that video and some others as well because we've gone a little bit more in depth into her story with some of those other videos that you might want to check out but we thought this update can share with you guys and inspire you guys to build your business and take advantage of the opportunities today so Tatiana babe thanks for taking the time thank you yeah I look back at that video once in awhile and I just feel like oh my gosh I was such a baby I was so young and that was just I was just starting on Amazon and I feel like so much has happened since then I feel like I've grown so much and the business has obviously grown as well yeah in that video that we did was the title was it that she makes 40,000 month at 23 years old now she's 26 years old and just going from you know just 40k a month was incredible at that time but seeing the growth and the progress that you've had in her business has been so inspirational to watch and observe especially how hard you've worked and what you put into building your brand and your business to where it is today so for some of you watching this you might just want to get started to make your first 10,000 or maybe you want to ramp up and skill to the next level and I think what you'll learn from this video hopefully is be inspired to see what's possible that there's many opportunities available but if you commit to it and you work hard and you learn and follow some of the advice that Tatiana will share with you guys that it can radically transform your life in so many ways so we thought we'd kind of start things off with a screen share - we have Tatiana share with you her online business we'll take this computer here and Tatiana is gonna log into her Shopify and Amazon and show you some of her stats I know there's some people are always skeptical and suspicious of things like this and so we want to be transparent and Tatiana is going to show you a level of transparency that no one else on YouTube is going to show you guys many people that teach and share building an Amazon business they never share what their business is and what product they're selling and the stats of it and the level of transparency with that and you know I know for you by sharing that you do have people that copy you and knock off your website but you wanted to share a little bit more about that yeah yeah I mean III guess it's it's it is unique to share these things I know a lot of people kind of have that scary scarcity mindset around I don't want to tell anyone else what Amazon product I'm selling because that's gonna create more competition for me and I get that because in some ways that is true you know when I do share my product I have my own youtube channel I talk about my product and sure transparently my subscribers who get you know inspired by that that some of them have gone and actually copied my website copied my products copied my social pages literally copied my business and so in some ways I could say well I shouldn't share this stuff with anyone because I should keep it for myself so that I can keep on succeeding but I strongly believe in having an abundance mentality and I strongly believe that there are more than enough opportunities for everyone there's more than enough to go around and everyone has the opportunity to be successful I also believe that you have to create your own success and the people who have copied me you know unfortunately they haven't been successful and that's because they're just copying me and I think it's important to learn how to model people you know if you are just getting started find someone else who's successful and model what they've done because they can they can share with you what works what doesn't work and that can help you achieve success faster but that's different than copying someone and so I strongly believe that if you're gonna go and build a brand you need to create a unique and authentic voice for your brand and that's how you'll be successful and that's what works for my brand and nobody can copy that you know there's only one lux curves and you know it is what it is so I'm not worried about that but I hope that by being transparent with you guys this helps you to realize how this is a real business because there's so much you know to be frank garbage on YouTube and a lot of people who are just selling a dream and selling a lifestyle and people are not dumb you see through that you can tell who's being authentic and who's not being authentic and so I hope that by sharing the stats with you that it shows you that this is real that people not everyone wants to share it on YouTube for the obvious reasons as I mentioned but people are doing this and they are earning financial freedom through their online businesses and so I'm one of those people I just want to inspire you to to be able to just at least know that this opportunity is out there for you amazing so we're gonna answer a lot of those questions and share with you what's involved in building a business the the road box the the adversity the challenges I think a lot of you can relate tatiyana you'll see and hear soon enough didn't have money and any experience doing this and we want to address a lot of that for you because I think a lot of you might be in that same position so before we do how about you log in and we'll share with you guys a little bit about our business and have tatiane just kind of set the context for everything else she's going to share so you can understand at least what our business is and some of the results of it so this is the Shopify dashboard as you can see here we're on the analytics and last month so we're calculating the sales from April 1st to 30th and they are three hundred and forty three thousand let me refresh this because people will always ask it's not real until it's refreshed so there we go and as you can see it's up a hundred and twenty percent since just the month prior so each month has been a record month for my business the sales continue to grow and I'm really grateful for that it's really exciting to see we have a returning customer rate of about twenty six point three five percent which is great and then we'll go over to Amazon so Amazon last month 39,000 and again that's from April 1st to April 30th and and you want to explain to people why you sell on Shopify not just on Amazon because I know a lot of people they wonder that and their 1in should I start with Shopify or Amazon and then even just kind of explaining your you know an average you do about two hundred twenty two thousand this is a record month so obviously this is a very high month but that's the average and then just even sharing what your profit margins are yeah the average for this entire year was two hundred and twenty two thousand so that's the average but yeah so I started the business on Amazon and that's why I recommend anyone who does not have an existing brand start if you have an existing brand by all means go and sell on your website because you have an audience that you can sell to if you don't have an audience you don't have an existing brand Amazon is your as your best friend because when you sell an Amazon you now get exposure to potentially hundreds of thousands or millions of Amazon's customers and that is priceless that's something that you just don't get if you're selling on Shopify Shopify allows you to build your own website but once you have a website you now have to get discovered so you have to do external marketing you have to do PPC you've got to do a lot of things to get people to your website versus on Amazon Amazon is a search engine just like when you go to Google and you type in on Google the things that you want to learn or whatever it is that you type on Google things will show up websites will show up blog posts will show up whatever it is that you ask for will show up same thing on Amazon when you type in a product that you want to buy different sellers listings will show up and so that's why there's so much potential for you as someone who's just getting started because if you have a great listing and you optimize it with keywords then you could show up when someone types something and then also Amazon has different pages whereas when you first start selling on Amazon you might be on page 15 and if you're anything like myself as a customer I only buy products on page one or two of Amazon I don't waste time going all the way through to page 50 Dean but you get to use Amazon's pay-per-click advertising so you have the ability to now pay Amazon to advertise on their platform and if you are you know the highest bidder then you can put your listing on page one of Amazon so even though you're brand new you don't have reviews you don't have sales you could still be featured on page one of the Amazon search results and that provides so many opportunities so many potential sales so it's just so much easier to start on Amazon especially since it's growing so much but eventually the goal is to start selling on your own website because as we know you know you don't own Amazon anything could happen and you want to kind of have more control over your brand over your marketing you want to be able to keep stay in contact with your customers versus on Amazon it's there Amazon's customers so you're limited with how much you can contact them and how you can contact them and on Shopify you just have much more control over everything and it's a it's a different experience so definitely starting an Amazon but eventually you want to think about you know kind of selling on your own website and just to be clear with Amazon this is just amazon.com in the United States I know you also sell in Canada and Australia and with the Shopify it's more international you know primarily the US but all over the world it's a little bit simpler for the for expanding in that way I guess yeah yeah I also have I opened up kind of a store in Europe just cuz I had inventory stored there so the 392,000 that I made last month was a combination of my amazon.com store my gear up Ian store my Shopify store amazon.ca so it was combination of all of my revenue and you want to share with people just profit margins because people always you know these are sales figures and it's not all profits I just want to clarify that I would say that with e-commerce in general we're looking to have a profit margin of at least 25% in my business I have net profits of 61% for my products and those are really good and really high and you the reason being is because I'm not spending money on paid advertising so I spend you know close to nothing on paid advertising and that helps me to just have higher profit margins and the way I'm able to do that is because I'm taking advantage of social media social medias free anyone can sign up anyone can post on social media and if you get creative enough and you put enough effort into it you can really build a great following and then that just helps you because then your customers come from your social media so the majority of my customers are coming from watching a video on YouTube or they're coming from seeing a before and after picture on Instagram and so where I'm attracting a lot of customers that way and at this point with my business there's a lot of word-of-mouth marketing in the beginning of course not so much because I was just getting started but now people really love the products I have raving fans and we have a Facebook group I built a Facebook group as a support group this was just something that I wanted to add as value for my customers something to differentiate myself from my competitors and it's grown to over 20,000 women and so it's a very active Facebook group and they just love to talk about my products and they market my products for me whenever there's someone new in the group they tell them to buy a lux curves product it's really cool so yeah that's how I did it there's so much to talk about how about you show us now just your website your product just so that people can check it out so this is my website so as you can see here this is just a simple website I just I bought a theme on Shopify when I was first started and I just customized it myself but I hired someone on upwork.com who can make changes for me at this point so yeah that's me and these are just my products and then we have like a sizing guide and one thing that you do an amazing job of is you you show a lot of different people a lot of influencers and just regular people using her product and a lot of these pictures people her customer she has raving fan customers that I know they send you their products they are they send you before-and-after pictures they love the brand they talk about it so much and that that helps with the social media and everything else you do but you know people are marketing the product for you which makes it so powerful yes so these are all like these here are these are different influences that are repping the product and then we also have like really great before and after transformations because we do like little challenges every couple months and then people see amazing results from that and so yeah awesome do you want to shoot this explain what the product is yeah so I sell waist trainers waist trainers they're nothing new this has been around since the 17th century the Victorian era when women would used to wrap their stomachs and wear corsets and a waist trainer is like a very mild version of course at of course that's really strong and it actually has the potential to you know break a rib and actually cause damage but a waist trainer does not have that strength so it can't hurt your body doesn't shift your organs like a lot of people think it does it's actually the way I discovered this product was because I was looking to lose my kind of lower belly fat and my mom had asked me hey why don't you wrap your stomach with cloth because she would do that when she was pregnant and she swore by it and then I kind of looked it up and I saw that Jessica Alba did that and like a few other celebrities and I discovered waist trainers and so that's how I originally came across it so it's not like a new product it's just that what I've done with the products I've customized it over time and I've made it so that it's really effective it really does work and it's just really comfortable and unique to my brand awesome and you want to and this is wow it looks very distorted but anyways that's the Amazon listing as you can see here the we have some items on sale right now but some are $69.99 some are $39.99 we just have some items that are just kind of overstock so when I have too much stock I'll put it on do a little sale and yeah so there's nothing special honestly I haven't worked on my Amazon listing in years it's really outdated but it's because I'm kind of trying to drive more people to my website awesome so that's luck skirts that the the in the behind-the-scenes I guess of her Shopify and Amazon just to give you guys an idea of that but how about now we transition to talking a little bit about your story and how this all started for you so how did this all start for you I know you started selling on Amazon and we're first exposed to all of this when you're about 20 years old now you're 26 I know it was not an overnight success took a lot of years and hard work and everything to get to where you are today but you mind sharing with people the story how you got into this and some of the challenges you had to get to where you're at today sure yeah wow it's been a long journey and you've been there to witness all of it it's been a huge learning curve and so how where do I start I mean I guess my intro to online business was first publishing Kindle books because that's something that you were doing and so I wanted to learn how to make money online but then I actually came across selling products on Amazon through a course that you had you had talked about yeah and if I had a friend that created this course was a mastermind of a mine is called amazing selling machine and I was already selling books on Amazon but it wanted to transition to physical products because there's way more potential it's a bigger marketplace with that and we both decided to do that course and you might even share and kind of before that like you didn't know any of this stuff you didn't know anything about like making money online I know we've already talked about this in other videos but just kind of I know there's a lot of people that are watching this they're like first time you've maybe ever heard of selling anything implying or building an Amazon business I think a lot of people can relate to that yeah okay so before that I was in university and I was also working part-time at a restaurant and I had no plans of building an online business I didn't even know it existed so I was that person who did not know anything about the online world and I had plans to work in the government and yeah oh yeah that was my my plan and my vision for my life then when I met you I saw what you had an business and I thought okay that's cool but that's him that's not me I wasn't really interested in building an online business but then I started to witness the freedom that you had and how he could just pick up and travel whenever he wanted and have that mobility and flexibility and myself being in school and working a job I was very limited with my time and even just hanging out with him we could only see each other on the weekends because I was working and busy the rest of the week and so are you with your business but on the weekends I remember I would come rushing downtown to see you and I'd be exhausted because I'd be so tired from all of the work but yeah so I saw the freedom it provided for you and then I also felt like well if we're gonna get into a relationship and you know we want to travel and have these experiences together I felt like I would hold him back because he has the ability to travel wherever he wants whenever he wants and I can only get a two-week vacation every year and so it wouldn't really work out so I was inspired to build an online business and so that's how I initially got into publishing Kindle books so Stefan has a Kindle course and I went through his course and I learned how to publish books online and so that got me a taste of doing online work so it kind of got my feet wet with the Amazon FBA because publishing Kindle books is similar to Amazon of being away because you're still using the Amazon platform and the way that you market your books has some similarities and so I did that for a little bit and I published I think like five different books and then I just kind of got bored of it and I we came across the opportunity of creating physical products on Amazon and that the thought of creating my own physical product was so exciting for me just like I even think about Matt we're real I guess and just publishing books it wasn't just like something digital it was real like I got excited to be able I'm very artistic so for me I was like oh what could I create and the packaging and the branding and all of that got me so juiced up and so excited that I was like okay let's do this and so we each went through the course and we were living separately so he was going through it on his own time and I was building a totally different business than her so I was selling supplements on Amazon was my first product and you decided we didn't want to partner up we just decided do her own independent businesses and then I would be further along in the course than him and so then it became like a little bit of a competition of who would you know complete the course first and launched their first product and so it was fun and so my first product because I was in cotton University and you know I was a waitress I didn't have that much money to get started so I had to kind of work with what I had and so my very first product was a cognacs sponge which is a natural which is the natural sponge and it's just like a face sponge to kind of wash your face and detoxify your face and I picked that product because it was within my price range it was 20 cents a unit and so my initial inventory investment was around like $300 so it really was what I could afford at the time and that was fine because I really wasn't I honestly didn't know what the potential was with Amazon FBA I was just like okay like I'm just let's just try it and see what happens and I didn't really have anything to lose I didn't invest that much into it and and so I launched that product I found manufacturers I went through the course like thank God for the course I just went through it step-by-step and I just trusted the process and I just did all of the homework I was told I did everything that they told me to do in the course every little detail I did and I followed it and I found my suppliers I placed my first order like all of that was new for me just the fact that I have to communicate with people overseas and how do I communicate with them and I remember trying to appear more professional than I am and like creating my my domain name and all of these different things yeah and by the way she started just with an iPad okay she didn't even have a computer or anything like that you use her maybe your mom's once in a while but because so because I was not in the online space I didn't have a need for a computer so I had my iPhone 4 and my mom had an iPad and so before I started this business I never owned a computer right I didn't need one and so so yeah I just started kind of looking for suppliers on my mom's iPad I remember I used to fall asleep as I was browsing my phone for suppliers on Alibaba like I was really obsessed with this business I really went all-in and and then eventually by the way you are gonna need a computer so just I mean I know you started with that but eventually you go home but just saying though people always ask me how did you start with $300 well that was six years ago you know but eventually I did get a computer I bought Stefan's old computer and that worked for me for many years and and yes so so I got my first order launched my product on Amazon and I recall that at the time that I was launching the product on Amazon was that when we were at seller con I think that was the when you got your first sale was that seller con which is silicon is a big event that is put on by amazing selling machine so they're the people that create the course that we went through they they have a huge community they put on these big seminars 2,000 people there whatnot so we went to that event in Las Vegas yeah and so at that event we were in the hotel room and I remember I got my first sale on Amazon and I was just excited and we were celebrating and it was so it was an amazing experience because I was like wow someone somewhere in the world bought my product and guess what I didn't have to trade my time for money that was the first time I really felt like I didn't have to trade my time for money because yes I invested time in the beginning but I've now set my business up I set up the listing I you know ordered the inventory and now I can start having you know people placing their orders from all over the world at any time and it is really cool so yeah so that was that was a first product I want to share it a second and then how you found the third one so so I knew that I needed 10 best more money into this business I saw the potential at that point I was making like a couple thousand dollars in revenue I think maybe up to 5,000 on a really good month with that first product but I was constantly reinvesting that revenue back into the business and I knew I needed that to you know pay for the inventory and to just kind of scale the business and I never thought about paying myself at that time I was like fine with working my job and still going to university but then eventually I just kind of realized that this product does not have that much potential you know it's selling for $10 a unit on Amazon and at that time I remember I was so frustrated because there was like a pricing battle myself and all the other sellers there was a price war and then everyone would just sell for a dollar less a dollar less a dollar less and then you no longer competitive selling at ten dollars you got to sell it for eight dollars and I wasn't making any profit so I just scratched that product I sold out of the inventory and then I discovered my second product which was a 3d fiber mascara and this product I actually decided on because at the time there was a brand called unique and I'm sure all of my ladies watching this know what that brand is because it was so popular at that time everyone was wearing unique mascara and it was really expensive and so I thought hey I know how to like source products from China I could find a very similar product at half the price and sell it for less on Amazon and I'm sure it would do well since everyone's buying this product so to be honest I didn't really do a lot of market research and that's something you guys should always do that's my warning but I was like excited about it and so I did the same process fall it's you know you learn this process once of private labeling a product and then you just do it again and you do it again and you do it again it becomes easier and easier easier each time so I did it again and then I this time you know I put I started a different brand for that product I called the product Wow lash because at this time I was working at a bank a credit union and I was wearing because I got samples from my supplier was wearing the mascara every day I went to work and I swear like every day the people who had come up to my toe would be like wow your lashes are so I was like wow that's a great name for my branch so I called it well ash it was probably one of my favorite logos today and I love that logo but one one lesson learned was that we eventually learned that was a trademark right and then your is that the one oh no and that wasn't the one okay I'll tell you which one was so with so with this product so with this product so yeah I received the product I started selling on Amazon and actually started to do really really well and I was really excited about it because it was a product that I would wear and so I started to post pictures of myself wearing the product I started to do some Instagram and some social media and it was like a really fun process but one day I gave the product to my best friend Victoria and Victoria has the most sensitive eyes I've ever seen anyone have and her I went bloodshot red and I got really scared and so I thought oh my gosh what if this happens to a customer from Amazon what are the risks here I learned about liability risk I learned about liability insurance I didn't have any and I just kind of figured you know what I just don't want to get my hands dirty with anything that you know cuz it was manufactured in China you know it's just not a good idea and that's for the reason like I've sold supplements certain products that are applicable topical products on your skin or that you ingest you actually want to source them from the country so probably in the United States just because there's more regulations with it I know you had some issues at one point importing it I think that was another product that was that was the one yeah okay yeah yeah so I learned later on that if there's any kind of topical product ingestible product you want to source that in the country of which you're gonna sell in I didn't know that at the time so I just learn as you go right you see the theme of being an entrepreneur you don't need to know everything before you start you take action but as you're taking action you learn throughout the process and you learn what you need to know when you need to know it honestly guys I I feel like because I was so young I had this naive way of going about things and it actually worked to my advantage I just did it you know I didn't worry everything that everyone else does coaching for people these days everyone wants to know about what are the tax liabilities how do I do this how do they want to know they want to paint the entire picture and know everything before they get started but the challenge with that is that there's so much and you're never gonna know everything and that prevents anyone from ever getting started I was the opposite I was young I was like cool I like this let's do it and I just did and I just took action and yes I made mistakes and some of them were costly mistakes but when you make a mistake once especially when it costs you money you don't make it again and even if you know all the you know you paint the picture ahead of time you're still gonna make mistakes there's no way you can avoid mistakes so for me it was just it worked to my advantage because I just did things I got done you know I like took a lot of action and I didn't have to know all the answers before doing it I just did what I was taught and just went with it put one step in front of the next and for the next you need to know the whole staircase you just need to know what's the next step and then you just learn that next step in the course and then you do it and I as a teacher and something that creates courses myself I don't have an Amazon course but you know I've taught a lot of people a lot it often when people know the whole steps and process they get analysis paralysis they get overwhelmed and they don't do anything with it and you don't need to know everything because a lot of things are so advanced and so far out there at a different stage where you need to know it but what you just got to do is just get momentum and as you get momentum going it just gets easier I'm glad that I didn't know everything before I got started because if I knew everything that would be required of me to build this business to where it is today I would have never gotten started I would said oh my god that it was like so much I don't know how to do any of that that's overwhelming and so that overwhelm leads to paralysis and so I think it was just better to just do it one step at a time learning as I go and you know we're gonna talk about later some of the challenges but one of the the heart biggest challenges is just learning everything for the first time not having a computer and learning how to do marketing learning how to like there's just a million things that you got to learn and you got to be willing and open to learning those things in order to see success with this business yeah and just add to that the learning never stops so don't think you need to know again everything to start but like every day we're learning everyday Tatiana's learning new things about every part of her business and that's just the ongoing process of being an entrepreneur it's exciting it's fun we get excited to learn new things but there are you know definitely things that you'll learn as you go through this journey yeah yeah so to wrap up you know the mascara I decided okay I want to move on to another product and so I sold out of that and and then I actually decided to kind of take a little bit of a breather from selling on Amazon and just kind of need a little bit of space and I was actually a huge blessing because through that space I was able to kind of get my creative juices flowing again and I said okay what is a product that I would buy on Amazon as a customer what's something that I would buy and to be honest I wasn't a big shopper losing a big shopper on Amazon at that time now I love shopping I've got Amazon Prime I'm like always shopping on Amazon but I wasn't at that time but there was one thing that I was buying quite a bit and so I looked at my shopping cart and it was waste trainers and I kept on repurchasing them because they kept on falling apart and they were low-quality so immediately I had the idea of okay well if I'm buying this product maybe other people are buying this product and if I'm having these problems with this product maybe other people are too and so I started to see reviews and do more market research and I learned more about waist trainers and eventually said you know I want to sell this product and to be honest it was not an ideal product to sell on Amazon because of the complexities of a product it's in the clothing category which is not something I would recommend for you guys because clothing has so many different sizes style differences everyone likes a different type of clothing if someone returns a clothing item to Amazon you can't resell it because it's considered used so it wasn't like the ideal not an easy product yeah and I remember even you telling me like don't do this product this is bad idea and I was like persistent and naive once again it was like no I want to do this I'm passionate about this I'm excited and so I did the same process again followed the course went and found a supplier overseas in China negotiated some terms and got that product up on Amazon and when I first started with this product it was just one color yeah one color hot pink I was like oh yeah I love hot pink and so I thought if I had a hot pink waist trainer on Amazon the other sellers they're all selling black so I'll stand out and I had like only a few different sizes and so since then I've expanded that product line to having like 600 SKUs I think 600 different SKUs around that and so many different colors and sizes and style variations and it's grown a lot which increases the complexities of the business as well but yeah about that and you know I think there's a really important lesson here that I want to make sure you guys caught Tatiana's first product wasn't this product that has had all the success her first product and I know many of you that are just in the beginning of stage right now you just need to get a product up there her first product yes it got her some sales but it served her for that a beginning initial stage and starting her business she picked a product that was within her budget a product that was a simple product a small product a product that would it allow her to gain a lot of experience and from that now position of experience and confidence and having gotten some success that helped her see there's another opportunity of a better product and she was able to pursue that and there's a lot easier now this time because of the confidence and the experience she'd already gained with the first product and then selling the second product she did better with that product had more success gained more experience from that but it's all because of the experience that she gained that allowed her to find the product in the business that she has today so I think a lot of people they don't take action because they're looking for the perfect product the perfect product does not exist you got it you know often when you go through a course even like amazing selling machine the waist trainer would not fit in their criteria but when you get a course they give you a criteria because they want you to to have early success and a hat when you have early success you get confident you feel good about yourself and yes there's many other products you could sell that are outside of that criteria but you only want to pursue those once you have more experience there are a little bit more advanced products a little bit more costly a little bit higher risk there's more variables to that and so that's a really important lesson because I think a lot of people are looking for the million dollar product like you just got to get in the game and gain experience and just one metaphor I like that I think is useful here that we talked about is you know we talked about you don't need to know everything to start and to do everything in a business you learn as you go I always look at it there's kind of two different types of people okay it's almost like you're shooting a gun and you're trying to hit a target that target is there a goal how much money you want to make a lot of people they wait and they wait and they wait and wait until they can aim perfectly before they pull the trigger because they want to hit the bull's eye what are the chances of you ever hitting the bull's eye if you've never shot a gun before very slim slim to nuts you're not gonna do it especially in that bull side that target of what you're trying to hit if it's ten thousand a month a hundred thousand a month and a big number that's gonna be a very far away bullseye so a lot of people they never start because they want to hit there they're a perfectionist they want it to be perfect that when they pull the trigger it's a perfect perfect product and it leads to all the success Tatiana on the other hand and what I believe is you don't need to hit the bull's eye the first time okay you just gotta fire the gun and when you perspire it yeah it might be way off over there but you course-correct and then you aim a little bit better next time and you fire and you get closer to the bullseye now you fire again and get closer and closer and closer and then eventually you you make better decisions and you have success you hit the bull's eye and so you know sometimes just got to be shooting you got to be you know you got to be taking action and you you modify your approach you change your approach you look to see where where you're at you just get better and better as you go and that's the philosophy that I think a lot of people need to have especially if you're the one if you're that kind of person that just doesn't start anything it doesn't take and has a lot of fear to do so I think just understanding you're gonna learn as you as you go through this journey neither of us ever went to business school there's many things that people that went to business school that we just not know about business but to be honest we don't really need to know everything about business we don't need to know everything you need to know and you learn in business school we just need to know what we need to know at this stage of our business and that's it and we can learn that through courses and mentors and and you know a variety of other means like that so yeah I guess my question that I have for you is you know you you started this you never sold anything before online didn't have any experience with this and you're a student and you know working as a waitress so I know a lot of people out there time is a big challenge just mind sharing with people just how did you manage your time and even just the finances to do this because you know it's expensive to go to school and you're also you know not making that much as a waitress but yeah so two different questions there let's start with the time I'm a very committed person I've always if you ask my mom like how would you define Tatiana's you'd say something like persistence yeah you set your mind to something and you just do it whether it's like getting a dog or getting an outfit like you'll just get it you'll find a way yeah I like to say I get what I want because I always find a way to achieve it or to earn it so when I decided that I was gonna start this business I committed myself to it and I said I'm going to make this happen no matter what it wasn't that I wanted you know I wanted to be successful I wanted to start a business and I was committed to it and I think there's a big difference a lot of people want things we all want to have a fit body we all want to be successful we all want to you know have a great relationship but there's a difference between wanting that and being committed because if you're committed you're gonna do you're gonna make it happen no matter what you're gonna do whatever you have to do to make it work and so for myself when I committed to building my Amazon business I was so committed that I realized that yes I have limited time because I'm going to school I've got a job and I'm trying to start this relationship no and make that work as well since he is on the weekends and having quality time together so I have to fit this into my schedule and so I just I just did not leave room for anything else there was no wasting time on social media I honestly didn't even hang out with my friends I really was really like isolated it was my business my work my school and Stefan and so I was just kind of like all in for that so that's how I made that happen I had made sacrifices with social life I didn't go you know at 19 years or at 20 years old a lot of girls are you know having fun and partying and doing things like I never did any of that I was so focused on building this business and then in terms of finances you know I've been working my first job I had to think like 12 years old and I've been working ever since and so I've always been really good at understanding the value of a dollar and how hard it is to earn a dollar and oh and that helps me to save money and so I've always learned how to save money and so I've been I've always had a bucket of savings and at the time I started this business I was going to university and I was you know paying for the university myself I didn't have I had a student loan but I was paying off that student loan every month and I was working my job so I had some savings but I didn't want to invest all my savings into this business because I don't think anyone should you know if you're gonna be starting a business you're not gonna invest your rainy day savings into this business you need to have extra money aside for that because you know it just doesn't make sense you have to be smart about your finances and so I decided that I was gonna invest like three to five hundred dollars in the business I forgot what number it was and so then I just you know I saved the money and I committed that to it and then I just reinvested everything yeah and you kept your job for a long time you know you continue keeping a job just to reinvest back in the business was her job a job is useful help you support yourself but also invest more back into the business it was really hard like I'm not gonna lie it was it was really hard to bootstrap the business because there was definitely times where I felt like wow I could really use some extra money right now I was doing everything myself so a lot times you know people ask well how do you start with little money you got to get resourceful and do things yourself I was the graphics designer I was the person posting on social media I was the video editor I was the you know the like I did everything for the business and so that's why I had to learn so much and so that required a lot of my time but because at that time I didn't have the money to invest into it I didn't have the option it was either I commit my time or I figure out a way to get more money to put into this business and I also was very adamant about not taking out alone to build this business I wanted to just invest what I could and then just reinvest from there I didn't want to build this business on debt and I also didn't like yeah I didn't want to yeah I just wanted to do it on my own and so in hindsight I think it was really good to start the business on my own but once I started to see traction and I started to see success with the business I think I I think I got too much in my ego where it was like no I don't accept any outside funding I don't want your help I don't want a credit cards help you know I don't want any help I want to do this on my own but that limited me because if I did say take out maybe alone or have some extra financing like I learned later on that a lot of ecommerce businesses do that because as your business grows you have to place larger inventory orders but a lot of times you have cash tied up and accounts receivable for three weeks so it makes it harder to place those larger inventory orders leading you to being out of stock which was constantly my challenge I was always out of stock it's a good problem to have but it wouldn't have been a problem had I not just said okay let me just take out a loan or borrow some money you know like I was just a little bit too you know just go about that and you know what one one thing I get to attest to just watching and observing you is just how hard you've worked you guys will never know how hard tatiana has worked in building her business but that's one of the most impressive things that i've seen from you is you're so incredibly resourceful that you just find a way to figure things out you know you don't even come to me for anything you just want to figure it out you you you you you are resourceful like you'll get your brother okay hey i need you to use your photoshop skills or be a model or get your friend and you know you know get out your phone and take pictures of the product but you just your whatever is presented in front of you you never get intimidated by it you just find a way to do it and figure it out and solve it and you'll work from morning till night like even like today she works a lot she's a bit of a workaholic I think we both are we enjoy it but there's tons where you know you're working like pretty late you don't need to anymore but I think you just get so absorbed in what you're doing you love it you're passionate about it you just can't stand when something's not done or not complete and you you know you're able you have this incredible capacity to take on a lot to do a lot and I've never seen you lazy or procrastinate I just see you just like like I struggle and have struggled with procrastination and things like that but you just do it and that's one thing that's just so amazing to watch with you and it you know no one ever see the behind-the-scenes of what it takes to build a business like this but you know how you've been able to figure things out and solve these challenges has just blown me away definitely harder worker than myself I've had times where I've worked really really hard but today I don't work nearly as hard as you've done and what you've done to build your business yeah I mean that's you know that's the truth of the matter is that when people sometimes see these numbers and then they see me and it's just like oh this is gonna be a piece of cake but it's like honestly guys this is gonna be blood sweat and tears it's gonna it's been the hardest thing I've ever done in my life I've had to you know I thought that by building this business I would just like you know live that 4-hour workweek and I could but you don't even realize what you're getting yourself into as an entrepreneur because now I'm just like oh there's so much I can do so much I can create so much possibly like an addiction in a way yeah it does but yeah it's a lot of hard work there's nothing that like yes you want to learn how to work smart but you got to work hard at working smart and one thing that's amazing about your business is how many virtual assistants do you have yes in my business I have six virtual assistants so I have three women in the Philippines doing customer support and one customer support manager in the Philippines and two people working on my social media from the Philippines so my business is ran by myself and six virtual assistants yeah and you know really you should hire more people we both know that everything but the interesting thing about this and you know this is maybe more a little bit higher level if you're just getting started these are if there's different levels obviously to business you get to a certain point where like Tatiana she has so many customers now that you need to hire people and scale it but you might be watching this you have no interest in that maybe you just want to build a simple business maybe for you it's like ten thousand a month twenty thousand thirty forty thousand maybe that's enough for you but the interesting thing that could happen though and it for you is like things just keep growing growing growing growing is a snowball effect and even though that's great there are challenges when a business that grows and there are certain things that I've you know like you've you've not known how to hire someone you don't know how to deal with the taxes and the inventory management and you know all of that I think for you you've done so much like probably more than like too many products and and you know it's not a simple business it's a bit complex but you learn as you go yeah I've ordered way too much inventory you know I went from being out of stock all the time to having hundreds of thousands of dollars in excessive inventory like dead stock you know that's the problem but you learn as you go and these mistakes can be fixed and yeah it's it's just it's a journey and yeah like like Stephan said you know over the last number of months my business has grown continues to grow each month as a record month and that's awesome but that comes with more responsibilities you know more customers more orders we have so many customer support emails that's one of our biggest challenges right now you know with only three people doing support emails we're getting hundreds of emails each day and like we're not able to respond to people within a time frame that you know from my standards I want people to get a response in 24 hours and that's just not happening so there's a lot that comes with growing your business and when I signed up and initially to sell on Amazon my goal was just to make 5 grand a month replace the income I mean that's way more than I was making as a server but to basically be financially free I thought I could do that with five grand a month and then I just like you just you see opportunity and the business grows and it becomes its own beast in some ways and I never ever imagined like having a business of this size and being the one who's reading it yeah and I think it's really important you know to really know what you want to get out of your business do you want to have a lifestyle business do you want to grow and scale to big business you got to kind of know that what do you want from your business and your vision can change of course you know I know for you you know you've you know we planned things way out in advance and you know we're starting a family soon and your lifestyles gonna change a lot you know right now when you're young you know you made the decision that you're gonna work more and harder so that later in your life you don't have to work and you can just be a mom if you want or you can have the passive income or you could have a simpler life you know that's that's the beauty I think I'm an online business is you get clear on what lifestyle you want to live and then your online business is something that supports that lifestyle and sure at times it can get crazy you know maybe maybe you might want to sell your business a lot of people do that you can build it you can sell it great thing about e-commerce businesses there's so many buyers for it they're like people love to buy e-commerce businesses because ecommerce is really hot right now so there's a big market and like a lot of people they go through like amazing selling machine they build a business 200 thousand or a million they sell it they go through the process again build it sell it and that right in and of itself as a business model that's the definition of a true entrepreneur a trip entrepreneur is not attached to the business they're like okay you know we built it up we can sell it let's move on to the next not even thinking about it and so I feel like yeah that's that's the journey that I'm on and like Stefan said like when I you know my goal with you know working as hard as I have in the last few years is because I've always had this vision of you know when we start a family that I don't have to you know worry about the finances you know I've already you know set myself up for success in that air yeah and I can just enjoy myself and relax a bit more so it's it's yeah it's a journey yeah so I guess my next question is how is your life changed as a result of this you know it's changed in in so many amazing ways but there's also been some challenges but just share with people like what's it like to have a business like this and you know we're living in Panama that's incredible 5000 square foot apartment and you know you're traveled the world all of that but just mind sharing with people just a bit of the reality I guess of what it's like and how your life has changed as a result yeah I would say that I mean the biggest difference is just having this level of comfort I just I feel like it was yesterday where you know my mom and I would be shopping at the grocery store and we couldn't buy the strawberries because they were too expensive or we would only buy the things that were on sale oh I remember when you know I was at Costco my dad has six hundred dollars to pay for his medication and he couldn't afford that so he has to pay for half of his medications causing him to be ill like these small things these these you know life cost money we live in a world where money has significant impact and there it's just the simple things that you can do and you can afford it I'm not like for me it's not about having a boat in like a you know a nice cars and all these flashy things it's about being comfortable and being able to take care of myself and my family and then even to contribute beyond myself and like do these amazing trips that we've done in Ethiopia and you know help you contribute beyond that so it's just it's been really nice to be comfortable and to not always be you know price checking things and you know I still definitely have some because it's happened so fast for me like I went from being a broke college student to like you know most I don't even want to say a multi-millionaire you can say it in like a few years that's a huge mindset shift because all of a sudden it's like you see numbers line doesn't caught up to the reality of it so you're still trying to save money and things like that yeah that's probably why I don't have enough employees in my business and like why you know so but yeah it's been it's been life-changing just to have that comfort and have this freedom it's not just the money it's the freedom so I can say you know if I wake up today and I say hey I don't want to work then I don't have to work in fact that's what I did today I said hey it's Wednesday I don't want to work today and I mean stuffins like hey do you want to do a video but that's fine so it's it's really nice to just be able to kind of live life on your terms if I want to go and enjoy and go see doing outside of this in this beautiful ocean today I can go and do that and to have the finances to be able to create beautiful experiences for yourself and your family or friends but also to just live life on your terms and not be put into this box living on this hamster wheel that really does not allow you to grow and express your full potential yeah and I'd say another big shift is there's no limits in your thinking like you know whatever whatever you want in life you can create like you know if you want to have a Ferrari you can have a Ferrari and even if you'd like it's not responsible enough to buy it now like I can I can create that if I want to if I want to have multiple homes like the your your reality for your life is very different than what it was before because I think when you just have a job and you make a certain amount of money there's a limit to that you you kind of have a you're in this world of limited thinking and possibilities yeah so now you've broken through a barrier where like anything is possible for your life and and I'd say like another thing too is just you know like you take care of the house and everything that we live in but you're like let's hire a chef let's hire an aunt let's hire a housekeeper like and you don't have to you know do those things you don't have to cook I mean if you if you want to you can but you just even have the choice of that to be able to leverage other people and buy your time back and that's allowed you I think to focus more on other areas of your life to you know your you know all the hobbies that you're into and things that you would never have been able to if you're just working as a student and at a job be for moms right to be able to like I know my mom she was always such a hard worker she was she owned her own bits she was an immigrant she moved from Brazil to Canada and she set up her own business as an aesthetician and working from home and she would work work work and then after work she would come and she would cook and she would clean and she didn't really get the opportunity to spend as much quality time with the kids because she had all these responsibilities and so it always like she taught me what hard work looks like and she taught me that you know you got to get make sure you make money in life because that's gonna be really valuable for you but to be able to now outsource those things like I was hesitant at first to hire chef and hire a cleaner but that's freed up so much of my time which I know I can put to better use doing some other things yeah and I think you know a business is something that you work upfront in you sacrifice a lot you do that upfront but it gives you the benefit long term to have freedom and time and for you to be a great mom and spend time with the kids and not have to worry about money your retirement all of that is set up versus if you're always trading your time for money you're always working hard but there's no really light at the end of the tunnel the light event of the tunnel is when you get your pension when you're 65 and retire versus this like you've created this in a few years that now your 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s can be whatever you want it to be if you want to retire you can if you want to just be a full-time mom you can if you want to travel the world you can if you want to build a huge business you can like it provides more options for you versus always kind of living month a month I also say just on the belief system that was some of you watching right now you might be seeing you know three hundred and ninety two thousand dollars in a month in revenue and thinking like how is that possible like what and because I was thinking that when I first started I remember I went to that seller con event from the amazing selling machine and I remember some of the speakers on stage they were making five hundred thousand dollars in revenue per month and I just couldn't wrap my mind around I thought are they lying is this legitimate how come nobody's talking about this like why don't I hear about this in my normal day-to-day life and it's because you just it's a very it's netcommunity not a lot of people have online businesses but i can tell you now being in this place that it's real and it can happen a lot sooner than you expect and i yeah i just never thought that that would happen and it's crazy how you know if i could make that happen you guys can't - and that's like the whole idea of this video is just to share with you that you know if i was able to create that kind of success you guys can - because there is nothing necessarily to my advantage yes i'm born in north america and that is a huge blessing and yes i've learned from so many amazing people but at the end of the day like the resources and the tools if you have access to the internet you have the all the advantages you know you can access all of the training that you need all of the tools all the education you can read amazing books like I did there's so much so many resources that can help you along this journey you can create the success that you want yeah you know everyone's journey is gonna be different might be longer for you might be faster for you everyone has a different journey and I think you know you've been able to change and grow so much in a matter of years but even if it took double the amount of time to get to where you are that's still you know less than a decade of your life that your life has changed in so many incredible ways so you know often like months a month things don't change much in your life it looks very slow a month a month but you know it's been more just the last two three years where things really have ramped up and scaled up in huge ways beyond what you can imagine because an online business once you get that momentum there's like a snowball effect where like your sales can double in months it can it can go up to exponential levels I mean you could get to a million dollars a month in sale that's a possibility now and it just keeps growing and that's because the hardest part is building the foundation right like we talked about in the beginning you're learning everything you're setting everything up for the first time that takes a while that takes time that takes learning and so that's the hardest part but once you've set that up now you have a system that you know can generate sales and can make money while you sleep and that can grow and grow and grow and really for me it's a it's been in the last two years that my business has kind of skyrocketed so yes I want to just ask maybe one one more question before we wrap up I know we've been talking for a while a while and thank you guys so much for still being here and listening to us and by the way if you're enjoying this please give this video a thumbs up here on youtube you can subscribe here for more videos on project life mastery we've mentioned some resources and I'm going to link to those in the description of this video one of them is the amazing selling machine the course that we referenced if you go to WWE my comm slash ASM link in description you can learn more about that and a few other things if you guys are interested as well we'll link to Tatiana's channel for you guys I guess if you just you know what would where would you recommend people start like what advice would you give to someone a beginner watching this video maybe they're inspired maybe this is the first time they've ever learned about a possibility like this in their life where would you what advice would you give to someone like that if their first getting started in a business like this and to help it so that they can change their life and create the life they want yeah well I mean I started by learning from a course I took a course and I just followed it step by step as I shared with you guys and honestly in hindsight I don't know how I would have done it without the training because I didn't have any business experience because I was never even a customer on Amazon because I didn't know I didn't even own a computer like there's just so much for me to learn that I don't know if I would have figured it out on my own I probably wasn't smart enough to figure out on my own but I was smart enough to humble myself to know that I don't know everything and that someone else has already paved the path for me and that's where the course comes in and so I'm just extremely grateful that we came across the best course out there which is the amazing selling machine it's still to this day like the number one course for Amazon six No eight years later they've been around for eight years now which is amazing too to have a course for eight years and to have such a hot hold such a high reputation it's very hard always making it better they read you the course every time they launch it so everything is brand new and what works today and even what works today is different than back before and the strategies in many ways like it's easier but it's also harder you know it's like a little bit it's more competitive Byam has grown so much bigger in many ways but there's also more tools and strategies available but it's just a different strategy of what works today it's different is not gonna work now and so you just have to adapt and modify your approach but the course is updated and it contains that information so Matt and Jason they're the cofounders of that course and honestly I owe them so much to them because like without their course and training I wouldn't have the success that I have with my business and so I would definitely recommend investing in a course you have to do your own due diligence you have to do your own research to determine if it's something that works for you but I think that investing in a course investing in your education is the best way to go about it at this point now I've done a lot of coaching for people who are selling on Amazon starting to sell on Amazon and a lot of people who come to me they watched YouTube's videos and they got inspired and they said you know what I can do this on my own I can figure it out what's in a course that I can't find on Google on YouTube and so they go about doing it on their own and then they make mistakes and some of those are costly mistakes but most importantly they're losing a lot of time and then they go and eventually buy a course and so I recommend just from the beginning getting a course yes you can do it on your own and I've even interviewed a guy on my channel who's done it on his own but it's a very small percentage of people who are gonna be successful trying to figure it all out on themselves it just for me everything in my life now whenever I'm learning something for the first time I get a course or I read a book I'm just trying to learn from people who are already successful I'm not here to be the Trailblazer I'm not here to try and be the pioneer I want to learn from people and model people who have the success I want yeah and that's a great point I think the reality is even with the course it's challenging okay a course does not guarantee success it's not like you do a course and you guarantee success you know there's still going to be challenges with it but you know like you want to make this as easy and increase your probability and chances of success as much as possible and of course is that shortened learning curve that if someone spent a decade learning something you can compress that and so you don't have to go through a decade of trial and error and make all mistakes you can do that you know there's people that have done that obviously but that's a very small minority of people and that most people are gonna give up by that point and be frustrated discouraged and even have so much fear and uncertainty in doing this without the proper guidance of this so you know and I one thing I also want to acknowledge to you and just mention is that it wasn't just like amazing a selling machine you continue learning you continue growing going to their seminars we've been to their event now four or five times you know other courses and trainings and seminars and books it's just if you want to be an entrepreneur you don't just do one course and have success it's just a constant over the years learning and growing it's a lifestyle being an entrepreneur it's just a way of being in your life and it's it's fun it's exciting it's it's you have to have the desire to learn and grow and for Stephan and I I think one of the reasons we're both successful is because we both we values growth at a high level you know if you if Tony Robbins talks about the 16 human needs for us growth is a priority and so for us we're constantly reading books I'm constantly listening to audiobooks and podcasts and doing like I'm taking a number of different courses I'm always trying to learn and grow and that helps me grow personally but it translates to my business without a doubt yeah awesome so listen I know you guys have more questions for Tatiana and maybe myself too and we'll maybe do some more videos like this if you guys are interested and leave a comment below and we can do another video following following up answering your questions maybe a live stream or something like that but listen we want to thank you guys for your time here today there's so much more to share I know there's more questions hopefully we covered a lot for you guys that are just getting started or inspired or maybe yet a certain level already wanting to scale it and ramp it up to another level if you guys want to learn more about Tatiana Tatiana James is her YouTube channel and you can find her on Instagram as well I'm gonna link below for you guys there her channel she goes more in depth into e-commerce and selling on Amazon and Shopify so she shares a lot of her wisdom and experience there for you guys if you want more of an introductory training some resources I put together and including some with Tatiana I'll link that below for you guys is free you can go to www.nasa.gov/station sell a machine and a variety of other trainings and resources that can help you guys just to save you guys time with your research I've already done hours and hours of research and can compress that for you guys and give you guys the most valuable resources that I've come across so thank you guys so much we look forward to seeing you again soon in another video god bless you take care

Channel: Project Life Mastery

Views: 227,928

Keywords: she makes 222000 per month on amazon & shopify at 26 years old, she makes 222000 per month, amazon & shopify, amazon, shopify, luxx curves, 26 years old, 222000 per month on amazon & shopify, amazon fba, financial freedom, make money online, amazing selling machine, waist trainer, inspirational, money, success, tatiana, branding, social media, online business, how to make money online, asm, mindset, motivational, amazon reviews, profit margins, how to make $40 000 a month on amazon

Id: ucc9n_TkhD4

Length: 66min 42sec (4002 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2020